Oh my pugness! The DMA staff has been going mutts over Dress Your Pet Up Day on January 14! We were so excited that we decided to start celebrating a little bit early this year. Our canine friends didn’t mind the inter-ruff-tion to their schedules, and our feline friends were glad there was to be no pro-cat-ination this time around—after all, they are purr-fessionals (whatevfur).

There is so much pet-tential with this round of dogglegangers that they just might head to Pawllywood after this blog post gets out! After all, the puparazzi eats this stuff up!

Sniff below for a fetching array of DMA pets re-creating works of art from the collection.

Thank you very mush for reading!

DMA Staffer: Katie Cooke, Manager of Adult ProgrammingDMA Pet: Bear, Tuxedo Cat, age 6 monthsPortrait Inspiration: Fox in the Snow, Gustave Courbet
I chose this piece for Bear to re-create because his tail is as fluffy as that of this beautiful fox in Courbet’s painting. Since it was 75 degrees when I took this photo, fake snow was used, and since he is a cat, Photoshop had to be used as well. Who knew cats don’t want to do what you tell them?

DMA Staffer: Andrea Severin Goins, Head of InterpretationDMA Pet: Artie, Maltese-Shihtzu , age 7 years, and Shelby, Golden Retriever, age 9 yearsPortrait Inspiration: The Devil’s Dress, Michaël Borremans
Shelby chose this work because she is drawn to the ambiguous drama and theatricality of Borremans’ paintings. Despite her fear of most things, she is an avid theater-lover and an aspiring Broadway actress. She included her little sis in her photo shoot because she thinks Artie is the drama queen of the household.

DMA Staffer: Kimberly Daniell, Senior Manager of Communications, Public Affairs, and Social Media Strategy; and Amanda Blake, Head of Family, Access, and School Experiences and Interim Director of EducationDMA Pet: Chloe, age 11 years, and George Costanza, age 10 years, West Highland White TerriersPortrait Inspiration:Twins, Everett Spruce
Chloe and George are just like peas in a pod and are the dynamic duo of pet costumes. These two furry friends have partnered up for the past two years, and it was an obvious choice to have this seeing-double pair bring Spruce’s Twins to life. Chloe is still intimidated by George’s professionalism; he is the ultimate pro, even wearing a wig.

DMA Staffer: Queta Moore Watson, Senior EditorDMA Pet: Floyd, Orange and White Tabby, 1 year oldPortrait Inspiration: Portrait of Manet, Henri Fantin-LatourIn this distinguished portrait of artist Edouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour “represents Manet as a respectable bourgeois citizen, rather than a painter, . . . to defuse the idea that Manet was a social as well as artistic radical.” We like to think of Floyd as a dapper young cat (yes, he is actually wearing that hat on his head!); however, in reality, Floyd drinks from the faucet, chases his tail in the bathtub, and still hasn’t learned his name. #catgoals

DMA Staffer: Stacey Lizotte, Head of Adult Programming and Multimedia ServicesDMA Pet: Parker, English Springer Spaniel, age 3 (he belongs to my parents; I borrowed him when I was home for Christmas in what has become a new holiday tradition)Portrait Inspiration:Share Cropper, Jerry Bywaters
My mom and I looked at several portraits before picking Share Cropper because Parker often has the same lost look on his face. My mom was the official costumer for the photo shoot—she made the hat out of my dad’s socks, cardboard, and Velcro, bought a child’s pair of overalls, and found some palm leaves in her neighbor’s yard to represent the corn stalks in our photo.

DMA Staffer: Jordan Gomez, Marketing ManagerDMA Pet: Jet, Toy Poodle often referred to as “Poodle Jet,” age 5Portrait Inspiration:Portrait of Mrs. Emery Reves, Graham Sutherland
Since Jet is a French Poodle, I felt like she needed to dress up as a portrait in the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection. I borrowed a puppy beret from another staff member and purchased the feather boa from a craft store and thought my lavender office chair would be the perfect setting for Poodle Jet to have her portrait made.

DMA Staffer: Jessie Frazier, Manager of Adult Programming
DMA Pet: Jenny, Basset Hound, age 6 and a half
Portrait Inspiration: The Abduction of Europa, Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre
Jenny shares a few traits with the Roman king of the gods—determination, a mischievous twinkle in her eye, and unwavering confidence in her supremacy. Also, like her less freckled COW-nterpart, she always gets what she wants . . . a peanut butter treat.

DMA Staffer: Julie Henley, Communications and Marketing CoordinatorDMA Pet: Lyla Jane, Australian Shepherd, age 9 monthsPortait Inspiration: Sea Nymphs, Hans Enri
Much like the sea, Lyla Jane only has two modes, calm and tranquil or unruly and intrusive. When I looked into these goddesses of the deep, two seemed to perfectly describe my little monster, AMPHITHOE, which means “she who moves swiftly around,” and AUTONOE, which means “with her own mind.” Ironic, since Lyla Jane hates water.

DMA Staffer: Jessica Fuentes, Manager of Gallery Interpretation and the Center for Creative ConnectionsDMA Pet: Nene, age 7 and a half, and Cleopatra and Frappuccino, age 4 weeks, ChihuahuasPortait Inspiration:Miss Dorothy Quincy Roosevelt (later Mrs. Langdon Geer), John White Alexander
I chose this work of art because it has been a favorite of mine for a long time and we have the perfect green chair to use as a prop! Originally I thought of posing Nene in the role of Miss Dorothy Quincy Roosevelt and my daughter in the role of the dog. Then, Nene unexpectedly gave birth to these two precious girls and I thought this would still be a great image for the three of them.

DMA Staffer: Anne Bromberg, The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and Asian ArtDMA Pet: Miss Suzl, Maine Coon Cat, age 6 yearsPortrait Inspiration:The Peaceable Kingdom, Edward Hicks
Suzl’s good with other animals so this work made sense!

DMA Staffer: Fran BaasDMA Pet: Captain Charles and Annie, age 6 yearsPortrait Inspiration: Nicolas Party, Two Men with Hats, 2016I pass this marvelous Nicolas Party pastel daily in the concourse. The bright colors, hats, snazzy collars and makeup make me happy. Obviously, this Photoshop mashup had to happen. My artist process was sitting on the floor with my lovely smart teenage niece and playing in Photoshop. Life can be stressful, but smiling and laughing with my niece last night was priceless.

Julie Henley is the Communications and Marketing Coordinator at the DMA.

Today is Brothers and Sisters Day, a day to cherish your siblings per the holiday’s description. I don’t have any siblings to cherish, but I did find some in the archives.

In this photo, sculptor William Zorach is demonstrating sculpting to a group of young students at the Museum School in 1945. His models—seated on the table on the left side of the image—are sister and brother Jerry and Dick Bywaters, the children of then Museum director Jerry Bywaters.

Another set of siblings in the archives are Nora (Howell) Wise and Frank Howell. In 1976, the Museum acquired a collection of pre-Columbian art from Nora and her husband, John Wise; papers from John and Nora came to the Museum after Nora’s death. The papers include this postcard from Nora’s brother Frank, a solider in WWI, telling her that he was coming home.

My dear sister,“All is well that ends well.” Though the end has not quite come yet, nevertheless we’re well on our way from war, etc, back to the dear old U.S. Will be at a sea-port in a few days.Best love to all, Frank

It was a truly exciting moment for me when I discovered that the DMA held a batik produced by “THE” Eliza van Zuylen. Owning one of van Zuylen’s exquisite hand-drawn cloths was a privilege that only very wealthy women in 19th-century colonial Indonesia enjoyed. With the average wage of a government employee being twenty guilders a month, and a van Zuylen sarong costing around thirteen guilders, these batiks were comparable to a Chanel bag or Louboutin shoes today. Adorned with European-style flower bouquets, hence buketan-style batik, the cloths were wrapped around the waist and combined with fashionable lace-trimmed blouses called kebayas.

Mainly produced by women in their home and for their private use, Javanese batik underwent a process of commercialization in the late 19th century. In addition to Peranakan Chinese, several Indo-European women on the north coast of the island established batik workshops, often to supplement their husband’s income. Mostly middle class, these women, who were of European and Asian, Chinese, or Arab origin, were situated in between the local Javanese population and the Dutch colonial society. Their intermediary position allowed them to create batik for several societal groups, including the Indo-European, Peranakan Chinese, and upper-class Javanese.

Eliza van Zuylen was one of these women; she was born in 1863 in Batavia (Jakarta) as the daughter of a Dutch soldier and an Indo-European woman. After her husband, Alphons van Zuylen, was appointed as government inspector in Pekalongan, she moved to this north coast city, which, since the 1850s, was an important batik production center. After helping in her sister Christina’s batik workshop, van Zuylen opened her own business in 1890. Starting off with just three Javanese batik makers, her workshop was very prosperous and expanded quickly, by 1918 becoming the largest Indo-European batik business in the whole of Java. Her workshop ended up being the only Indo-European batik business to survive the economic depression of the 1930s.

The batik designs, inspired by Dutch horticultural books, imported European flowers, and European fairytales, were created by Eliza van Zuylen herself and then drawn on the cloth with hot wax by her batik makers. Provided the wax drawing met van Zuylen’s expectations, she added her signature to the cloth and allowed it to be dyed. Together with a stamp from her workshop, this signature guaranteed the authenticity of the batik. Not only was the habit of signing batiks, which had been introduced by Indo-European batik entrepreneurs such as van Zuylen, meant to help protect patterns, but it also functioned as an advertisement.

A gift from former Museum director Jerry Bywaters, this beautiful sarong entered the DMA’s collection in 1982. The signature “E v Zuylen” and the stamp stating “Batikkerij Mevr. E. van Zuylen, Pekalongan” prove that this batik was made in van Zuylen’s workshop. The beige and blue color combination, in this case probably achieved with indigo, is referred to as kelengan and was popular among both Indo-European and Peranakan Chinese women on the north coast. The body, or badan, of the cloth is decorated with three flowering twigs along with birds and butterflies. This motif is repeated on the head, or kepala, but on a contrasting dark background. The pattern fields and the edges of the cloth are decorated with floral lace borders. Such a batik would have been suitable for a young Indo-European bride on her wedding night, with the beige symbolizing her purity and the lovebirds referring to marriage.

Elisabeth Seyerl is the McDermott Graduate Curatorial Intern for African and Asian Art at the DMA.

Is there a mustache in Pablo Picasso’s The Guitarist? Check out this crazy cubist painting on Level 2 and decide for yourself.

Virabhadra, Karnataka or Kerala, India, 16th–17th century, stone, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Alvin and David T. Owsley via the Alvin and Lucy Owsley Foundation in memory of Colonel Alvin M. Owsley, with the assistance of the Wendover Fund

The Hindu god Shiva is seen on Level 3 in a warlike form as Virabhadra. He has a perfectly groomed mustache fit for a god, and he gets bonus points for the super cool hat.

Saturday is the 177th anniversary of the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836. Celebrate Texas Independence Day this year by viewing newly installed works by Texas artists in the American Art Galleries on Level 4 or visiting the new exhibition Loren Mozley: Structural Integrity.

From 1950 to 1952, the Museum, in partnership with the Junior League of Dallas, presented a thirty-minute weekly television program on WFAA called Is This Art? The show consisted of a panel talking about topics including discussions on specific artworks, collections, or types of objects; demonstrations of craft techniques; how to become an artist; and aesthetics. We found a few images in our archives from the show’s two-year run.

Dallas Morning News, News Staff Photo, October 10, 1950

This image is probably from the first episode of the series, which aired on September 24, 1950. The show included an introduction to the series and a demonstration of plastic arts, emphasizing the upcoming State Fair exhibits with objects from the Contemporary Design and Pre-Columbian exhibitions. Pictured from left to right are Mrs. Betty Marcus, Museum League President; Jerry Bywaters, Museum Director; Stewart Leonard, Assistant to the Director of the City Museum of St. Louis; and Mrs. John Rosenfield, moderator.

The image above likely depicts an episode from December 8, 1951, featuring a demonstration of silver objects in various stages of construction by John Szymack, a silver craftsman with the Craft Guild of Dallas. Seen here from left to right are Mrs. Howard Chilton, chairman of the Junior League’s television committee; Mrs. Bruce Steere, Craft Guild member; Alvin Jett, permanent panel chairman; and John Szymack (seated).

If you’ve come into the Center for Creative Connections (C3) within the past month you may have noticed a few changes in our space. Aside from new artworks in our Encountering Space exhibition, we have transformed one area into a Prototyping Station. What does that mean exactly? Well, in this space we use reproductions of works of art to engage our visitors in conversations. These conversations allow us to better understand visitors’ perspectives and inform our thinking in the development of exhibitions. For the past month, we have focused on three works of art from our collection.

We often have so much background information about a work of art that it is difficult to decide how much of it visitors need to know. There is a delicate balance between providing information and allowing visitors to learn through their own observations. While we did these tests, we only provided a minimal amount of information besides the image.

Our dialogues have included both face-to-face conversations and written responses to questions we’ve posed. We have documented these responses and decided to make word clouds to show you what we have received so far. Word clouds, or tag clouds, are a way of visualizing data. You enter text into a computer program, and it generates a visual representation of which words are repeated most often. The words that are used most often appear larger. Take a look at the following word clouds we generated based on visitors’ responses to the following:

“The title of this work of art is The Minotaur. Tell us what you know about the Minotaur.”

“We are looking for descriptive words for this work of art. List what comes to mind when you look at this picture.”

Visitors noticed many things, ranging from objects to emotions.Why is this process important? We want to gather input from visitors. Putting this testing area in the middle of the gallery allows visitors to see the process we use to develop interpretive components for a work of art. It also gives Museum-goers a chance to contribute information and a perspective that may be different from the staff’s, which is an important component of the C3 mission.

The next time you are at the Museum, stop by the C3 and share your responses in our new prototyping area.

Jessica Nelson is the C3 Gallery Coordinator at the Dallas Museum of Art.

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